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Privacy Technology

How To Stop Amazon From Listening To Your Alexa Recordings (tomsguide.com) 103

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
Yesterday, Bloomberg dropped a bombshell report revealing that Amazon employs thousands of people around the world to listen to voice recordings captured in Echo owners' homes and offices, and uses them to improve its Alexa digital assistant. "The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexa's understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands," the report says. "A screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the recordings sent to the Alexa auditors don't provide a user's full name and address but are associated with an account number, as well as the user's first name and the device's serial number."

While many have assumed that this was already happening behind the scenes, it may still come as a surprise to see proof of the practice. Thankfully, there is a way to stop Amazon from listening to your Alexa recordings. Tom's Guide explains: 1. In the Alexa app, access Settings. You'll find this button at the bottom of the menu in the top left corner of the home screen.
2. Click on Alexa Account. This should be at the top of the page.
3. Select Alexa Privacy. You'll be taken to Amazon's external Alexa privacy page. You can review a number of things here, including our voice history, skill permissions, and other data settings.
4. Tap "Manage How Your Data Improves Alexa."
5. Toggle "Help Develop New Features" and "Use Messages to Improve Transcriptions" to Off. Alexa will no longer learn and improve from your responses, but your recordings will be safe and sound.
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How To Stop Amazon From Listening To Your Alexa Recordings More

How To Stop Amazon From Listening To Your Alexa Recordings

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  • One weird trick to stop Amazon from spying on you: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11, 2019 @06:05PM (#58424048)

    1. Take a sledgehammer.
    2. Smash that fucking surveillance device.
    3. Stop buying or using any surveillance devices in the future.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Where's the "X. Profit!" step? You're fired!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Same for smartphones?

    • My step 1 involved never buying a stupid listening device and then wondering why a company is spying on me. IJS

  • Step 0 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OzPeter ( 195038 ) on Thursday April 11, 2019 @06:05PM (#58424052)

    Step 0. Don't buy an Alexa and you won't have this problem.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Great idea. Now, how can I stop Facebook from recording everything I upload to them into their database?

      • You can't. You agreed to it when you signed up to their service.

        Of course, you can delete all your existing content (don't worry, they'll keep copies), disconnect from all your "friends" (if they don't know you well enough to complain the next time they see you, are they really friends?), delete all your posts which mention any locations, companies or products. Then log off and don't come back. That'll stop them from recording anything new into their database, but they'll still know of your existence.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      If you DO buy an Alexa, you will have to check these settings after every software update. That is exactly the kind of thing that accidentally gets flipped by the software updates whenever the company pushes them out.

    • Came here to post this but looks like many of my Slashdot brethren have already stated the obvious, heh.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by anetk ( 1733874 )

      I have an Amazon Fire tablet and it came with Alexa, but I don't use Alexa and have it disabled and it still uses 80% battery.... I do block a lot of amazon domain names use pi-hole and the tablet tries to communicate with Amazon about every minute.

      • Re:Step 0 (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Obfuscant ( 592200 ) on Thursday April 11, 2019 @08:18PM (#58424566)
        You bought an Amazon-branded device intended to deal with Amazon content and you are surprised that it tries to communicate with Amazon on a regular basis? This is how it checks for new content, for one thing. That's the same reason why the Nook app starts services that check with B&N every so often. It's functionality that most people want, because most people want to know when new content is available without having to run the app every hour or day or even week. It's why good email clients have a poll option, too.

        It's a shame that people here are so devoid of context that they think the correct answer to the question is to not have an Alexa device at all. That's the OBVIOUS answer, which means maybe they aren't getting the actual question. The actual question is not "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings", it is "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings without losing the functionality that the user paid for."

        Would we like a car analogy? Answering the question "how do I keep my car from pulling to the left when I apply the brakes" with "don't apply the brakes", "don't drive that car", or "don't own a car" is ridiculous. The correct answer is "have your brake system checked". It should be obvious that the person asking such a question doesn't want to lose the functionality of having and using a car, but wants to know how to solve a specific problem while using it.

        Of course, we now have more than 50% of the responses parroting the "don't own one" or similar variants, which is useless in context. The most useless ones are those whose answers apply to devices that have already been bought and paid for, as if giving Amazon the money in exchange for no service was ok. "Buy one, hit it with a sledgehammer". (Of course the "buy one" part is implicit, since you can't do the latter without the former.)

        • "Buy one, hit it with a sledgehammer". Of course the "buy one" part is implicit, since you can't do the latter without the former.

          You can, but you may not like the consequences.

        • There are people who don't like the idea of Alexa and those who do. For the first category, the "Don't own one" response is natural. For the second category, your response is natural. As for me, I have a natural bias because I have a voice problem. Not a bad one, but people often have to ask me to repeat something. Alexa would be somewhere between useless and extremely aggravating for me. One of my sons and his wife and kids love Alexa, and the other son and his wife hate it, so I don't know whether my gra
    • Step 0.1: If you really, really insist you can't live without this Alexa piece of shit, unplug the gods-be-damned thing when you're not using it.

  • Easy! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spaceyhackerlady ( 462530 ) on Thursday April 11, 2019 @06:09PM (#58424066)

    Don't use Alexa.

    I flatly refuse to have a device in my home that is connected to the internet and that, by design, monitors the sound around it. No f**king way.

    ...laura

    • Re:Easy! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11, 2019 @06:14PM (#58424096)

      So I take it you leave your cellphone outside

    • Re:Easy! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rogoshen1 ( 2922505 ) on Thursday April 11, 2019 @06:17PM (#58424106)

      Sadly it's going to get harder and harder to avoid this kind of shit.

      As long as corps view any bit of data they don't hoover up and sell as "Money left on the table" the encroachment will continue.

      The big one will be cars. Dear god, help us.

      • "I know you're listening. They SHOOT spies, don't they?"

      • The big one will be cars.

        Will be?

        Whoever thought it was a good idea to take some of the most complex electronic hardware and software systems we've ever invented, which have typically used architecture designed for a closed system where trust isn't normally an issue, and connect it to arbitrary external systems with little if any thought for the security, privacy and reliability implications, really should be banned from ever doing anything with technology again for the good of us all.

        • Transceiver antennas can be disconnected and the cables shunted into a dummy load. End of 'external connectivity' problem.

      • Especially if manufacturers keep insisting you can turn these features off.

        It never ceases to amaze me how even geeks insist there's nothing to worry about because you can disable telemetry. Then they're surprised, after some kind of hack exposé, that the option was never honored by the company. Shocker!

        • It never ceases to amaze me how even geeks insist there's nothing to worry about because you can disable telemetry.

          Geeks are smart, and they usually understand the pervasiveness of these technologies.

          When geeks insist there is nothing to worry about, it is usually because they have some kind of vested interest in the technology being accepted.
          Just look at the softball puff pieces that have been put out in the last 15 years about things like Facebook or smartphones or Alexa.

          No, a lot of geeks just want their money, and they don't care about you or your privacy concerns.

      • Don't buy cars with microphones and cameras on the inside. If for some gods-be-damned reason the car won't function without them (why the hell wouldn't it?) then don't buy that model car.
        Additionally: don't want to be tracked everywhere via GPS? Easy enough to locate a GPS antenna, cut the wire, and cap the receiver end of the cable with a 50-ohm resistor, so it doesn't come off as a 'fault' that makes some idiot light turn on.

        • and cap the receiver end of the cable with a 50-ohm resistor,

          At the frequencies used by GPS systems, a 50 ohm resistor will likely not appear as a 50 ohm impedance. A 50 ohm GPS antenna will also likely not appear like a 50 ohm resistor at DC. In fact, if the antenna is active (internal amplifier powered by DC on the antenna cable) the receiver can easily determine a fault when the antenna is replaced by a 50 ohm resistor. Even just a simple crossed-loop GPS antenna will have close to 0 ohms impedance at DC, and the receiver can easily detect the difference.

        • Obfuscant is probably right about shorting the antenna.

          As long as the vehicle is one which has non-GPS models, then the antenna is likely in a corner of the windscreen (whatever Americans call it). Just glue tin foil on the outside of the windscreen where that sits, then do the same on the inside of the screen. When you switch on, and the GPS can't pick up any satellites ... problem solved. And if you're conservative about your choice of glue, you can return this system to "store condition" before you sell

      • The big one will be cars. Dear god, help us.

        Yes, God help us.
        By the end of this century, human society will be something like THX 1138.
        Maybe sooner.

    • Don't use Alexa. ... I flatly refuse to have a device in my home that is connected to the internet and that, by design, monitors the sound around it.

      Especially if one has a daughter named Alexa -- which someone I know does *and* has an Alexa enabled device.
      The device apparently responds when she calls (yells) for her daughter.

  • Don't buy a listening device for your home? (Score:3)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday April 11, 2019 @06:10PM (#58424076)

    I mean, how obvious does it have to get?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by imidan ( 559239 )
      Christ almighty, it's like volunteering to be surveilled by the goddamn Stasi! Amazon, the on-line bookstore from the 90s, is distributing listening devices that they have somehow convinced people to purchase for themselves, and is employing a spatially-distributed sweatshop of thousands of people who sit for nine hours a day and listen in on other people's private conversations, transcribe them, and file them away. This dystopian horror goes beyond Orwell's nightmares, and the whole point of it is to sell
      • If you think it's beyond an Orwellian nightmare, you may want to read 1984, or Animal Farm. It's a bit more surveillance than Road to Wigan Pier I grant you.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Oh, decidedly not Orwellian yet. But the direction and the eventual use of this data is clear, even if it still will take a while. The economy going to hell in a totalitarian state is also clear. This universally happens, unless there is a lot of riches to sell, e.g. as the Saudis have. But look at Venezuela, which has a lot of oil too and people now have trouble getting enough to eat. Also, what happens to the Saudis when the oil runs out or becomes worthless is also pretty clear. They do not produce anyth

  • 1. Unplug Alexa
    2. Take a hammer to the electronics
    3. Melt it in a fire of a thousand suns
    4. Toss in the rubbish bin

  • This better get a hundred "don't buy it" comments. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How daft does one have to be to think a config option is an acceptable fix?

  • Told her it was nothing but a potential snooping device of little marginal value.

  • IF you have one of these devices in your home/office, DO YOU TRUST Amazon to actually honor these settings? I certainly don't, and won't have one of these (or ANY of the other versions by other manufacturers) devices in my home.

  • 5. Toggle "Help Develop New Features" and "Use Messages to Improve Transcriptions" to Off. Alexa will no longer learn and improve from your responses, but your recordings will be safe and sound.

    Says Who ?
    20 years old low tech "wannabee" @ Tom's Hardware, or wait! Amazon maybe ?

    please oh please

  • Don't put a microphone, that sends all the recordings to another person / company, in your house. NO ONE who owns a Alexa, Google Home, or any other "smart" speaker, can complain about the way their data is handled or used. The moment you put a smart speaking in your house, you swore off any data privacy that you might of had available.

  • The best way to prevent Amazon from spying on you is never to buy one of these infernal devices and never to put one of them into your house. If you do otherwise, you are begging them to listen in. Trust me: No matter what they say, no matter what the law demands, they will listen in. Remove the temptation. It may mean that you have to get out of your chair to turn the lights on and off, but I see this as a small price to pay for privacy.

  • So a software toggle will prevent that eavesdropping?
    You insensitive wishful food.
    Even if you did accurate traffic analysis you could not be able to know whether your recordings are being sent out.

    The solution? Stop immediately using these useless voice operated (so called) assistants!

  • Amazon Audible says that it provides as part of it's conditions of use/policies the Amazon Privacy Notice [amazon.com]. Then in that document they the mobile app may use the user's location but that "most mobile devices provide users with the ability to disable location services. [amazon.com]" This privacy policy is misleading because the instructions (and instructions from Android device manufacturers) is to turn the GPS service off.

    Even with the GPS turned off Audible still sends the network router MAC address and SSID to koch [appcensus.io]

  • They are currently selling Alexia [amazon.it] CDs. Why they have to listen to mine?
  • The only way I would consider having an Alexa device is if it had a hard switch on the microphones, ie "press to talk". I don't know of any such device, so I would have to rewire an existing device. In the normal Alexa devices, the microphones (7 of them!) are tiny, surface mount, hard to get at, and hard to rewire.

    https://www.ifixit.com/Teardow... [ifixit.com]

    Another option would be to build my own, with a switch. I found instructions on installing Alexa on a Raspberry Pi. It sounds like it does all the contr

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